Editorial: Your Church Is Too Old
Something you’ll often hear Adventists complain about is that there aren’t enough young people in our church. There are probably many reasons for that, but one that I’d like to explore has to do with who’s leading the church.
The word to describe leadership by the oldest people is “gerontocracy.” Our General Conference (GC) is a good example. Many in the GC building are past 70. Ted Wilson is around 75, and I know of several others, still ensconced in offices, who pass him by a few years. Some conference, union conference, and division leaders are in the 70+ age frame, and so are some pastors.
These people have a big part in defining the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Many of them haven’t had any ministry experience outside an office in decades! Most are sincere and good—but they don’t always “get it,” such as their stonewalling of female pastors despite an increasingly gender-egalitarian world.
Never in history has each generation experienced the world more differently than the previous one. Never have our grandchildren been as unlike us as they are today. We who are older—myself included—are unlikely to understand the world the young live in.
Worse, many older people don’t even want to understand: they insist that the past is best and must be repeated.
I appreciate the need for experience to do some jobs. But experience too often means unwillingness to make necessary changes. The young will never get experience unless we step aside and let them do things—and that means they will try things that bother us.
But is that any worse than what we have now? We are stuck in an inertial frame. We still maintain four levels of administration above every congregation, and can’t discard a single one. Apologetics is the only theology we’re allowed to do. We still count baptisms as the measure of success, even while congregations are fading away. Ellen White is de facto above the Bible. Some leaders seem to believe that what we eat is more important than who we are.
Our church was founded by young people, among them a dynamic young woman. I wonder what they’d say about all the gray male heads in nearly every pulpit and office in the church?
Loren Seibold
Executive Editor, Adventist Today Magazine & Website
17 May 2024
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